Hanover Acceptances Limited forms the centre of an international private investment Group whose origins date back to 1902. Our principal sectors of focus are real estate, agribusiness and venture capital.

Our core operating companies include Dorrington and African Realty Trust, which are leaders in their respective markets, together with Fresh Capital Group, our venture capital vehicle investing in high growth areas.

The Group’s management philosophy is to participate actively in our investments and partnerships. We add value by complementing the management of operating companies and creating a framework for enhanced performance.

Our uniqueapproach

The Group combines the assets, growth record and professional skills of major public limited corporations, with the freedom, rapid response and entrepreneurial style of a private concern. This enables us to maintain the firm foundations we have established, to seek out fresh investment opportunities to grow our core businesses and to maximise financial returns.

Strategic intent

Our principal objective is to add significant value in everything we do for the benefit of our stakeholders – by which we mean our people, the companies that we invest in and our customers. We achieve this through a combination of strengths: focus on areas of expertise and innovation relating to our core businesses; leadership in the sectors and markets in which we participate; active investment supportive of, and close working with, management; and the creation of strategic partnerships with other commercial organisations who can benefit from our expertise.

Qualities and values

We run all our businesses to the highest professional standards, using similar corporate governance structures and financial disciplines associated with large public companies. We blend this with our own unique collegiate, consensual style of management – rigorously analytical yet encouraging innovation and rewarding entrepreneurial endeavour. Our core values are based on absolute personal and commercial integrity, hard work and loyalty to our employees, advisers, customers and partners.

Committed to the future

We are maintaining leadership in our core businesses, taking advantage of opportunities for further investment, and acquiring and investing in new businesses. All of this is facilitated by the freedom and flexibility of our private status. We are confident that the rapid response and professionalism of our execution will allow us to implement our ambitions.

The Group forms the centre of an international private investment Group whose origins date back to 1902. Our principal sectors of focus are real estate, agribusiness and venture capital.

Experts at creating leading businesses

Hanover Acceptances Group has a proven track record when it comes to establishing and growing businesses. We currently operate in three key commercial sectors - real estate, agribusiness and venture capital. Dorrington is a leading investor and developer in both residential and commercial property in the UK. African Realty Trust is southern Africa’s largest citrus fruit grower, exporter and juice processor. Fresh Capital Group is our venture capital vehicle, investing in high growth sectors and in leading-edge areas tangential to our core portfolio.

Dorrington

Dorrington is our residential and commercial property investment and development company. It is one of the leading residential investors and landlords in the UK, a position paralleled in the commercial market where it maintains a specialist role as an active, value-driven investor in Greater London. Dorrington excels in combining its investment instinct, developed through more than 60 years’ experience, with rigorous analysis. We are visible managers with a ‘hands-on’ approach – a characteristic that enables us to outperform industry benchmarks and gives us clear identity with our tenants, peers and financial partners.

Commercial

Dorrington Properties PLC, our commercial property business, operates a highly focused investment strategy. Geographically, we target buildings and sites in central and greater London, a city that our team knows intimately on a ‘village by village’ basis. Offices are our preferred asset class, with retail investments also represented within our portfolio. We will only buy mature investments if we see mis-pricing or if our insights give us clear reason to expect better than sector growth. Rather, we are commercial property ‘manufacturers’, buying tired, damaged or unloved property, and creating from it best value.

Residential

Our core residential business is purchasing and managing properties that are let on statutory tenancies. We are also investors in the deregulated private rented sector, and our interests in ground rents and let properties are represented by over 5,000 units, mainly in the London area. As one of the largest residential investors and landlords in London, we are proud of our reputation for integrity and fair dealing. We manage our portfolio intensively, to get the most out of the buildings to the mutual benefit of ourselves, our lessees and our tenants.

African Realty Trust

African Realty Trust is southern Africa’s largest citrus fruit grower, exporter and juice processor. Founded in 1902, our operations have great depth and scale, yet we are also a family-owned business, knowledgeable and caring about every detail of fruit production and processing. This combination allows us to meet the needs of a single customer or market from one source, as well as to deliver absolute commitment to quality and traceability.

Fresh Fruit

We are the largest single source of citrus fruit in southern Africa, producing over 85,000 tons of fruit each year from our comprehensive farm at Letaba. We take full responsibility for and control every aspect of fruit production: from research into new cultivars, the germination of seed and the control of disease and pests, to the growing, picking and packing of the final product. Our integrated approach ensures overall consistency, quality and traceability of our produce – from seed to carton.

Juice

Letaba Citrus Processors – our juice extraction and processing operation – is a leading processor and blender of juices for the South African market, able to process over 120,000 tons of citrus fruit per season. This is an advanced facility, combining sophisticated processing technology with high-quality ingredients, that is able to extract, process and blend citrus and other fruit and vegetable juices, pulps and purees to customers’ exact specifications in both frozen and aseptic formats.

Fresh Capital

Fresh Capital is the specialist investment arm of the Hanover Acceptances Group. Formed in 1998, Fresh Capital provides Hanover Acceptances with a means of diversifying its investment portfolio, pursuing high growth opportunities and investing in leading-edge areas tangential to its core activities. Fresh Capital prefers to leverage the position and experience of the wider Group by emphasising, but not limiting itself to, sectors related to its core investments, being: fast moving consumer goods, with a specific focus on food and agribusiness and associated manufacturing and supply chain functions, and the property sector.

In order for portfolio companies to benefit fully from the Group's involvement, Fresh Capital seeks companies based in the UK. Together with board representation, this facilitates collaboration with management so as to add value to the on-going operations of the business.

The board

The Group combines the assets, growth record, and professional skills of major public limited corporations with the entrepreneurial style of a private firm. This is reflected in the composition of the Hanover Acceptances Limited board.

Manfred Gorvy founded the Hanover Acceptances Group in 1974 and has been involved in the operations of its subsidiaries for over 40 years. He is Chairman of the Board and its main subsidiaries. He is a Chartered Accountant and has a BCom from University of Witwatersrand, South Africa.

Lydia R Gorvy

Lydia Gorvy has been a member of the Hanover Acceptances Limited Board since 1991 and has been involved with the Group since its formation, taking responsibility for its retail investments.

SEAN B GORVY BA (Hons) PhD (Cantab)

Sean Gorvy is Chief Executive of Hanover Acceptances Limited and has been a member of the Board since 1997. He serves on the boards of all its main subsidiaries. Prior to working within the Hanover Acceptances Group, he spent five years with Morgan Stanley's real estate, corporate finance and M&A departments. He has a PhD in political economics from Cambridge University.

Alan J Leibowitz BSc (Building) MSc (Planning)

Alan Leibowitz joined the Hanover Acceptances Group in 1977 and was appointed to the Board in 1988. He was educated in South Africa, subsequently obtained a Masters degree from Stanford University and later attended the Programme for Management Development at Harvard Business School. Alan is Managing Director of Dorrington PLC. He is a board member of The British Property Federation, and a property board member of a number of charities including The National Theatre and the Royal College of Art.

Trevor Moross BA BSc (Estate Management) FRICS

Trevor Moross has been involved in the residential property industry since graduating from Reading University in 1975 when he joined the Hanover Acceptances Group. He has been a member of the Board of Hanover Acceptances Limited since 1984. Trevor is a past President of The British Property Federation. He is well known as a spokesman for the property industry on residential property investment matters. He is a board member of London and Quadrant, one of the UK’s largest housing associations.

Jürgen Grossmann Dipl.-Ing MScIA PhD

Jürgen Grossmann was appointed to the Board of Hanover Acceptances Limited in 2003. He is the sole owner of Georgsmarienhütte Holding, one of Germany’s leading steel manufacturers. Georgsmarienhütte Group produces specialty steel and currently comprises some 50 companies with 12,000 employees and a turnover of 4bM Euro (2011).

He served as Chief Executive Officer of RWE AG from 2007 to 2012. RWE is one of Europe's five leading electricity and gas companies.

Over the past 15 years Dr. Grossmann has been a board member of a number of corporations, amongst them Volkswagen AG, Deutsche Post AG, Messer Group, Tognum.

Currently he is Chairman of SURTECO S.E., and a Director of Deutsche Bahn AG, Hanover Acceptances Group London, British American Tabaco Germany, JPMorgan Chase International Council, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of RAG-Stiftung.

Juergen's honours and awards include a Masters in metallurgical engineering from Technical University Clausthal, in Business Administration (MSIA) from Purdue University's Krannert School, USA, a PhD in engineering from the Technical University of Berlin and an Honorary Doctorate from Purdue University in 2000, "Bundesverdienstkreuz erster Klasse" and "Große goldene Ehrenzeichen der Republik Österreich". He received the Niedersachenpreis. The German chancellor appointed Juergen to serve on the National Commission for Innovation (until 2014) and the National Platform for Electro Mobility (until 2013).

Christopher J Sheridan FCIB MSI

Christopher Sheridan has been a member of the Board of Hanover Acceptances Limited since 1995. His professional career has been in merchant banking, formerly Chief Executive of Samuel Montagu, and he now undertakes a range of non-executive roles including Director of Willmott Dixon Holdings Limited, Director of Standard Bank Plc and Director of Alpha Bank London Limited.

Edward Walker-Arnott QC, LLM (Lond)

Edward Walker-Arnott was appointed to the Board of Hanover Acceptances Limited in 2000. He was Senior Partner at leading international law firm Herbert Smith (now Herbert Smith Freehills) from 1992 until 2000, and is a consultant to the firm. He sat on the Departmental Enquiry (the Cork Enquiry) into insolvency law between 1977 and 1982. The report resulted in the enactment of the Insolvency Act 1986. At the beginning of 1983, Edward was appointed as one of the first three nominated members of the Council of Lloyd’s, sitting on the Council for six years. He chaired the Investigations Committee at Lloyd’s which conducted the investigations of the many Lloyd’s scandals of the late 1970s and early 1980s and prosecuted the subsequent disciplinary proceedings.

In June 1997 Edward was asked by the Arts Council of England to conduct an independent review of the Royal Opera House. He has been a Governor of the South Bank Centre (1999-2009), a member of the board of the Royal National Theatre (2000-2008) and a Governor of the Wellcome Trust (2000-2010). He is on the Board of Kymab Limited a bio-tech start-up company spun out from the Wellcome Sanger Institute at Hinxton, Cambridge. Edward is a Fellow of University College, London where, in 1965-1966, he studied for his LL.M and became a Visiting Professor in 2000. He was made a QC (honoris causa) in 2013.